Pastor Julie’s 2024 Reading List

1. Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World 
Jennie Allen

 In Find Your People, best-selling author Jennie Allen draws on fascinating insights from science and history, timeless biblical truth, and vulnerable stories from her own life to help you:

• overcome the barriers to making new friends, and learn to initiate with easy-to-follow steps.
  
• find simple ways to press through awkward to get to authentic in conversations.
• understand how conflict can strengthen relationships rather than destroy them.
• identify the type of friend you are and the types of friends you need.
• learn the five practical ingredients you need to have the type of friends you’ve always longed for.

2. Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken
Dr. Henry Cloud

New York Times best-selling author, psychologist, and leadership expert Henry Cloud equips us to understand and manage trust for successful relationships through five foundational aspects. Dr. Cloud explores the foundational aspects of trust that must be present for any relationship to function successfully and helps us understand how to implement them. He also guides us through the difficult process of repairing trust when it has been violated and broken, even when restoring trust feels impossible. 

3. Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World 
Rich Villodas

Pastor and author Rich Villodas is convinced that only Jesus offers a way of being human that is both strong and tender enough to tear down the walls of hostility we experience daily. 

In Good and Beautiful and Kind, he reveals how… 

• these three essentials are stolen by sin, powers and principalities, and trauma. 
• we can get goodness, beauty, and kindness back through contemplative prayer, humility, and the cultivation of calm presence. 
• the traits of healthy conflict, forgiveness, and justice lead to wholeness, healing, and a new collective future—when rooted in the ancient way of Jesus.

4. All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir 
Beth Moore 

Beth Moore, the New York Times best-selling author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries, now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir.

All My Knotted-Up Life includes:

• 8 pages of photos.
• an exploration of Beth’s childhood, love, marriage, and motherhood.
• insights on what it was like when she was “waist-deep in a season of loss.”
• a discussion of her 2018 break with the Southern Baptist movement.
• details on the origins of Living Proof Ministries.

5. The Power to Change: Mastering the Habits that Matter Most
Craig Groeschel 

Nothing is more frustrating than knowing you need to change and trying to change, but failing to change. You feel stuck, no matter how hard you try. Craig Groeschel, author of Winning the War in Your Mind, knows what it's like to be caught in that cycle. That was his own story—until he discovered these practical and biblical principles for experiencing lasting change.

In The Power to Change, Craig will help you find true change in your relationships, habits, and thoughts by unpacking:

• how God's power, not your willpower, leads to true transformation.
  
• the real reasons you do what you do.
• why falling isn't failure.
• the power of creating small habits that lead to big change.
• how to choose what you want most over what you want now.

6. The Four Loves 
C.S. Lewis

With penetrating logic and charming wit, British writer, scholar, theologian, broadcaster, and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis explores the four aspects of love: 

• Affection, the most basic form
• Friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful
• Eros, passionate love
• Charity, the greatest and least selfish

Lewis exposes the pitfalls in our loves, leading us to the agape love that God has for humankind and the type of love we must develop to nurture our relationships. Throughout this compassionate and methodical study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God.

7. Why Revival Tarries
Leonard Ravenhill

Leonard Ravenhill's call to revival is as timely now as it was when it was published over 50 years ago. The message is fearless and often radical as he expounds on the disparity between the New Testament Church and the Church today. Why Revival Tarries contains the heart of his message. A.W. Tozer called Ravenhill "a man sent from God" who "appeared at a critical moment in history," just as the Old Testament prophets did. Included are questions for group and individual study.